How would you redo the Punisher?

[CharlesPhipps]

The Punisher is a character who has a lot of baggage, a lot of it from authors who want to bury him rather than write him.

If I were to ever be given the keys to rebooting the Punisher, I would do it this way:

* Frank Castle comes back from a bunch of morally ambiguous special ops missions, heavily suffering PTSD.
* He tries to become a NYPD officer but he's not comfortable with it for various reasons.
* He's worried he's going to snap and hurt his family. So he's going to tell his wife he needs a divorce.
* His family is killed in Central Park but who kills in Central Park. The papers report its a mob hit. However, it's actually a group of plainclothes cops doing a shakedown that gets witnessed by the Castles. Maybe have Frank's daughter try to film their murdering their victim with her cellphone.
* Frank survives and is hunted down by the media that paints him as a guy who kills his own family and dangerous spree shooter. All of the people involved in the murders escaping any form of justice.
* Frank gets help from his old friend in the CIA, Microchip, and decides to do his mission: to punish people who hide behind money and power who the legal system refuses to deal with.
* Frank's opinion of the superheroes is that he's just a guy with guns and can't make a real difference on a societal level while they can and is severely irritated with them.
* Frank really hates his fanboys because the media have created this idea of him as an insane guy who loves killing criminals because they don't want to deal with the actual issues.

I would also make my 40 issue run (let's be generous) with this:

* Frank fights Hydra, the Serpent Society, Friends of Humanity, Roxxon Oil, and Watch Dogs as well as the Maggia.
* Frank is a Hero with Bad Publicity to the fact the people he rescues all think he's a violent psychopath.
* Frank will fight Kraven the Hunter who really IS a serial killer who enjoys murder for its own sake and lose badly but survive.
* The Chameleon will talk about how he once wore Frank's face while pointing a gun at a little mutant girl (Molly from Runaways) and it was totally worth it to continue blackening his name.

[stryke]

To me the supposedly 'good guy with a gun' vigilante is such a loaded power fantasy in of itself that I think it'd be better just to bury him.

* The Chameleon will talk about how he once wore Frank's face while pointing a gun at a little mutant girl (Molly from Runaways) and it was totally worth it to continue blackening his name.

Already been done in She-Hulk as the writer on that run hated her banging the Juggernaut that much

Was the issue that got me to drop that comic as wasting an issue on writer-on-writer pettiness I did not find to be a good use of my time.

Then I also dropped the Runaways the issue after the one you're refferencing too but that was more the realisation that this run suuuuucked and Whedon could not write a comic well to save his life.

[clearspira]

The Punisher is a character who has a lot of baggage, a lot of it from authors who want to bury him rather than write him.

To me the supposedly 'good guy with a gun' vigilante is such a loaded power fantasy in of itself that I think it'd be better just to bury him.

Come on now, let's be honest about this: The Punisher has baggage from LEFTY authors that want to bury him and went to an extreme level to try and discredit him. He can't be a good man who was wronged by the system. No. He's a Nazi, a racist, a fascist, a maniac. Lefties hate the idea of the ''good guy with a gun'' and always have and thus getting Lefties to write it was a dumb idea wasn't it?

Thus, I would re-write the series by just bringing back the original character as he was intended and having him written by someone who does not hate the character. Suddenly the original profitable audience will return. Let him shoot pedos. Let him shoot rapists. Let him shoot murderers. Let him be ''John Wayne marching into town to clean shit up''. BTW, I wouldn't want this guy to exist in real life. But guess what? It ain't real life. Its fiction. He gets to shoot whoever the author wants him to shoot. He gets to be 100% right each and every time when he takes yet another shitbag off the streets.

And frankly, I do not see what the issue is with power fantasies. Keyword being: fantasy. No one is actually going out and killing people because they read the Punisher. This is one step away from ''GTA makes you want to break into cars and kill and prostitute'' my guys.

[Winter]

The problem with The Punisher is he just doesn't work as a solo character. Castle is really at his best when interacting with other in Marvel because he's so out of place that the conversations he can have with other characters is engaging in and of itself.

Over years we've seen other characters in both Marvel and DC who follow Frank's line of thinking and see some AU versions of established characters also become like The Punisher, "You hit them and they get back up I hit them and they Stay Down!" And we're left to wonder, is he right. Would the world not be better off in the MCU had Daredevil just killed The Kingpin off, how many lives would be spared if he wasn't around after his first escape attempt?

But the problem is this doesn't work in the end because Frank and others like him have no real end goal. They're not killing to end threats they're killing to make themselves feel better. Let's contrast Castle with another gun toting comic book character, Judge Dredd.

In the 2012 film Dredd there is a scene where a couple of kids point guns at Dredd and his partner and Dredd... just stuns them. He kills a lot of people in this film but we see him willing to be lenient several times throughout the film and this is true to his character. Take for example the insisting insistent. Anders realizes that one of the people she and Dredd are arresting is possibly responsible for the murder of three people but she's only 99% certain. Dredd's response, "Can't execute a perp on 99%".

Dredd is a more layered character who can work in a number of stories. He is in a world where he HAS to be Judge, Jury and Executioner but he is more then that. To go back to the kids, pointing a gun at a Judge means they can be executed but he instead lets them go after stunning them because he knows they're in a situation where they need to do this in order to survive so he just stuns them and gets back to the real problem.

Castle isn't the same, he's a one note character and while that note can be interesting after a while it's just boring to listen to without other notes to add to it. Dredd is interesting because he's more then just someone killing to "Balance things out".

[stryke]

And frankly, I do not see what the issue is with power fantasies. Keyword being: fantasy. No one is actually going out and killing people because they read the Punisher. This is one step away from ''GTA makes you want to break into cars and kill and prostitute'' my guys.

This is something I'd normally agree with, and have said variations of it in the past. Thing is the Punisher is frequently marketed to kids as a hero, and so deserves that extra level of examination/consideration. GTA game are age restricted after all, ditto similar media like Death Wish, but the Punisher gets to be made into lego and the like.

Thing is Punisher has become so fully embedded into popular culture you could make him a werewolf and it wouldn't do a blind bit of difference at this point. No attempt to 'redo' would. See when the writer on the Punisher run at the time tutted at police putting his logo on their cop cars which made about as much impact as a fart in a wind.

Also everything Winter said is spot on.

[CharlesPhipps]

I'm as Lefty as humanly possible and note that pearl-clutching over Frank Castle is something that reminds me way too much of the Moral Guardians like Tipper Gore and the Right in America over the things I liked as a teenager like comic books, heavy metal, slasher movies, and video games. If I can play Grand Theft Auto and not become a violent psychopath then why the hell would reading Frank Castle make me into one?

In real life, there's angry psychopath spree killers but that's NOT Frank Castle anymore than Ozzie is a Satanist wizard.

And no one can explain the real difference to me between being a fan of John Wick and Frank Castle except the latter actually is trying to protect people while the former is protecting himself.

[stryke]

And no one can explain the real difference to me between being a fan of John Wick and Frank Castle except the latter actually is trying to protect people while the former is protecting himself.

To try and have a go, and obviously this is very YMMV, also that the films were rated 15/18 so not viewable by kids, John Wick gets what I'm going to call the genre fun clause. He's an assassin, assassins have a long history of being fun, he's like Mr and Mrs Smith, ergo when he headshots 16 people in a row it's understood that it is fun times all round.

Take Spy x Family. Lloid's a spy. Spies are certified fun. He's like James Bond, must be fun. Yor's an assassin, as mentioned, fun. Yuri is secret police, and here we have a huge glaring problem. Secret police are not fun. Secret police are about as anti-fun as it is possible to get in terms of occupations, and the writer does not shy away that he is indeed the kind of real life secret police we've had in our history who routinely tortures people. This is really, super not fun, and so we find him utterly loathsome. He is most definitely the absolute worst. Also there's the whole being a siscon thing, which I know for many others is the bigger red flag, but for me it's definitely the secret police thing.

Frank Castle is a vigilante spree killer. Not fun.

[CharlesPhipps]

Frank Castle is a vigilante spree killer. Not fun.

I mean he's a vigilante spree killer of Neo-Nazis, mafia bosses, slavers, and Russian terrorists.

I feel like people have forgotten Frank Castle goes against Bond villains and guys from Taken. People have forgotten he's got an actual character.

[stryke]

Okay different tack to the John Wick/Frank Castle disparity.

No bloody moralizing.

They killed his dog, ergo they're all gonna die. No one turns up in a primary colour costume to complain that we shouldn't kill Theon in an annoyingly whiny manner, and because it's not their comic, they are of course totally in the wrong, and are so much more immature than the guy wearing black and a skull, and it's right that we should just shoot all the criminals cause superheroes don't solve anything, and the only possible solution is the very final one.

John Wick just gets on with it which is significantly more entertaining.

To put it another way Frank Castle is actually Frank Grimes.

He's there to contrast the unrealistic superheroes, and show how things should be handled realistically, and also don't question how many supposedly super realistic characters actually live between two bowling alleys.

One of the problem I had when I was still reading Punisher comics, and I used to read a ton of them trying to re-capture some of the magic of reading DC's Hitman, is how frequently he gets to win in those comparisons. It'd be like if in that episode of the Simpsons, Grimey's scheme worked, Homer got fired for entering that kid's competition, he lost his mansion of a house, and it'd all be very 'mature' and 'realistic' which of course translates to nihilistic, grim, and depressing.

[CharlesPhipps]

Okay different tack to the John Wick/Frank Castle disparity.

No bloody moralizing.

They killed his dog, ergo they're all gonna die. No one turns up in a primary colour costume to complain that we shouldn't kill Theon in an annoyingly whiny manner, and because it's not their comic, they are of course totally in the wrong, and are so much more immature than the guy wearing black and a skull, and it's right that we should just shoot all the criminals cause superheroes don't solve anything, and the only possible solution is the very final one.

John Wick just gets on with it which is significantly more entertaining.

To put it another way Frank Castle is actually Frank Grimes.

He's there to contrast the unrealistic superheroes, and show how things should be handled realistically, and also don't question how many supposedly super realistic characters actually live between two bowling alleys.

One of the problem I had when I was still reading Punisher comics, and I used to read a ton of them trying to re-capture some of the magic of reading DC's Hitman, is how frequently he gets to win in those comparisons. It'd be like if in that episode of the Simpsons, Grimey's scheme worked, Homer got fired for entering that kid's competition, he lost his mansion of a house, and it'd all be very 'mature' and 'realistic' which of course translates to nihilistic, grim, and depressing.

That's the thing though, Frank Castle DOESNT lecture.

He doesn't say superheroes are ineffective.

He often expresses admiration for Captain America and even Spider-Man. He's very much not an Ennis character who mocks guys in spandex despite Ennis writing him.

SUPERHEROES (and their writers) express disdain for FRANK.